The Librarians: The Next Chapter - Season 1

The Librarians: The Next Chapter is far from original, a bit cheesy, and at times predictable, but fun nonetheless. After a delay in airing date – the series was originally supposed to air on October 24th 2024– it was finally time for a The Librarians (2014) sequel in May 2025. In many ways, this series is a carbon copy of the original; the characters are similar, the setup is similar, and the atmosphere is similar. If you’ve seen the original, you will know whether you will like this one as well, simply put. If you haven’t, a bit more information is in order.

If you’ve seen the original, you will know whether you will like this one as well

The Librarians: The Next Chapter, like The Librarians (2014) and the various movies, centers around a Librarian who is in charge of a magical library. Their day-to-day job consists of securing magical objects to keep them from falling in the wrong hands. In this series, we follow Vikram Chamberlain (Callum McGowan), who was the Librarian in 1847 in Serbia. At the start of the first episode, we learn that Vikram is caught in a time bubble, only to be released in present day Serbia by Librarian Jacob Stone, whom you might know from The Librarians (2014). Vikram is now out of time, with no way to return to the past. When he accidentally releases magic into the world in an attempt to return to his own time, magical artifacts around Europe suddenly come to life. Vikram is thus tasked with cleaning up the mess he caused.



He does not do this alone. He quickly gets assigned a new Guardian (someone in charge of protecting the Librarian), named Charlie Cornwall (Jessica Green). He also happens to run into Lysa Pascal (Olivia Morris), an incredibly smart scientist, and Connor Green (Bluey Robinson), a historian and conspiricist. The rest of the season follows the case-of-the-week format: each episode is about a magical artifact causing chaos, and the four of them have to stop it. For fans from the original series, be warned: Stone quickly disappears to the background, only to be seen in the first and last episode.

The series has the same playful vibe as the original, giving it some necessary lightness

It took me a few episodes, but I did warm up to all characters. Not all of them are the best of actors, but it helps that they clearly enjoy playing in this series. Overall, the series has the same playful vibe as the original, giving it some necessary lightness. This helps look past the poor CGI and cheesy dialogues. Just like the original, this series does not try to be original or ground-breaking. Far from it, it walks the often-trodded paths once again, but at least it does so in an entertaining way. Episode quality gradually increases over the season (or maybe we just got more used to the characters), leading to a satisfying finale.



If you want to enjoy this, do not think too long or hard about what is happening. Questions such as: why does everyone speak English to each other in Serbia? Why does English in 900 A.D. sound like Modern English? Why does it sometimes take them painfully long to figure out something obvious, or do they sometimes figure something out without any clues or reason? These types of questions are probably best suppressed to enjoy the series to the maximum. Whether that is something you are willing to do in watching a show, I leave up to you.

In short, enjoyable for sure, but unoriginal in almost every way. It delighted the sometimes surprisingly gloomy summer days the past few weeks, so I will be waiting for season two for sure. The original order was for two seasons already, so there is at least one more to come.